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Updated: November 16, 2024
"By the word of a hillsman, but thou shalt have thy will," said the chief. "We are seven hundred men choose whom to fight." "The oldest or the youngest," answered the man. "Pango Dooni or Cumner's Son." Before the chief had time to speak, Cumner's Son struck the man with the flat of his sword across the breast. The man did not lift his arm, but looked at the lad steadily for a moment.
And he would have turned back, but he knew that the hillsman had ridden far beyond his reach. So he ran as swiftly as he could; he climbed where it might seem not even a chamois could find a hold; his eyes scarcely seeing the long, misty valley, where the haze lay like a vapour from another world. There was no sound anywhere save the brawling water or the lonely cry of the flute-bird.
Soc., at Nashville, the MS. notes containing an account of Sevier, given by one of the old settlers named Hillsman.
I was seldom dismayed, for life had been such a rough-and-tumble game that I held to cheerfulness and humour as a hillsman to his broadsword, knowing it the greatest of weapons with a foe, and the very stone and mortar of friendship.
"I come to hold the road against Pango Dooni, as the Dakoon bade me." Pango Dooni laughed. "Your words are large," said he. "What could you, one man, do against Pango Dooni and his hillsman?" "I could answer the Dakoon here or elsewhere, that I kept the road till the hill-wolves dragged me down." "We be the wolves from the hills," answered Pango Dooni.
Cumner's Son had not looked behind after the first few miles, for then he had given up thought that he might be followed. He sat in his saddle like a plainsman; he listened like a hillsman; he endured like an Arab water-carrier.
It was half-way towards noon when the hoof-beats drummed over the Brown Hermit's cave, and they rested not there; but it was noon and no more when they rode through Pango Dooni's gates and into the square where he stood. The tall hillsman dropped to the ground, and Cumner's Son made to do the same. Yet he staggered, and would have fallen, but the hillsman ran an arm around his shoulder.
"The lad speaks with the tongue of a friend," said a scowling hillsman, advancing, "yet how know we but he lies?" "Even by this," said Cumner's Son, and he spoke the sacred countersign and showed again the bracelet of Pango Dooni, and told what had happened.
He took them without a word and, still without a word, stepped out of the gate that swung open for him and into a light, spitty snowstorm. With the inbred instinct of the hillsman he swung about and headed for the little, light-blue station at the head of the crooked street. He went slowly, coughing often as the cold air struck into his wasted lungs, and sometimes staggering up against the fences.
"The son of Pango Dooni knows the lion's cub from the tame dog's whelp. You shall keep your word. Though the sun ride fast towards noon, faster shall we ride in the Neck of Baroob," said the hillsman.
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